In the processing of poultry, such as chickens, which are to be sold to the public, typically the processing steps such as evisceration of the carcasses and the cut up of the carcasses are performed automatically on a poultry processing line, whereby the birds are suspended by their legs and transported in series through a plurality of processing functions.
In order to eviscerate poultry carcasses, the typical process steps include decapitating the carcasses, opening the vent of the carcasses, and removing the viscera from the vent opening. Typically, each carcass is suspended by its legs from a shackle that is suspended from and moved along an overhead conveyor rail, with the birds being moved by the shackles in closely spaced series through the evisceration station. The eviscerator extends a spoon or loop device into the opened vent, downwardly into the visceral cavity and then scoops the viscera upwardly from the bird. Once the birds have been mechanically eviscerated, the birds and their drawn viscera must be inspected visually for imperfections, such as disease, incomplete evisceration, contamination, etc. While the birds are still suspended by their shackles, they are transported past an inspector who is trained to look for the blemishes. If a bird is not perfect, the inspector removes the bird from the processing line.
One of the problems involved with visually inspecting poultry carcasses as they move rapidly along a processing line is that the inspector has a difficult time inspecting the visceral cavities of the birds. The visceral cavities of the birds face upwardly as they move along the processing line, and the inspector usually is spaced laterally from the processing line. Also, it is desirable to move the birds as rapidly as possible along the processing line so as to maximize the production of the processing system.
Thus, it would be desirable to have a means whereby each poultry carcass is tilted to an attitude that exposes its visceral cavity in a lateral direction with respect to the processing line so that a poultry inspector can inspect the visceral cavity of each bird.